Monthly Archives: March 2011

Hello lovely friends and readers,
Please forgive the lapse in posting on this blog, but there has been a big interruption that I eluded to last week in my CTIA posts. Last Tuesday, when I was at CTIA, I received a phone call from my Mom that my Grandma Grace had just been diagnosed with a terminal disease and was being put in hospice at her home. After many phone calls and talking to relatives, it was determined that I didn’t need to rush home from CTIA but that the situation was serious.
On Friday I went to visit my Grandma, who is 91, and she was somewhat awake and was surprised that so many folks were visiting her. This Monday, her health had declined and more of the family had gathered, at one point she woke up enough to greet her newest great-grandchild, Weston (as seen above), and then ask the rest of us, “Are we having a party?” “Yes, Grandma we are.”
A bit later she asked me privately, “Am I sick?” “Yes, Grandma, you are.” “Oh.”
Sick enough to die yesterday, Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 1:45pm, as myself, my Aunt Dana, my sister Allison, and my cousin Traci stood at her bedside.
I have much to say, but right now I am too sad, too exhausted, and too worried to write it all out. I owe work to clients, proposals to future folk, blog posts & photos to you all, but right now is not the time. I wish I were the type who could separate personal from professional and plow forward, but I am not.
What I would like to say right now, tonight, is that my Grandma Grace was my best Grandma and I miss her terribly already.

Thurs 03.24.11 – On our last day in Orlando, the nice folks of WOMWorld, aka Tom Messett & Adam Woodley, took us to the Boggey Creek airboat rides at Lake Tohopekaliga in Kissimmee, Florida. While completely different from anything to do with mobile, it was a great palate cleanser after the neon thumping wiz bang of the CTIA trade show. It was very nice to get out of the composed, planned Orlando and drive south to the edge of the start of the headwaters of the Everglades to take an airboat ride through a Florida lake.
As a birder and nature lover, it was wonderful to see a sandhill crane on her nest, to see many egrets, herons, various water fowl, alligators, a water moccasin snake, and best of all, a bald eagle soaring within 100 ft of us. The shallow lake waters with tall grass, lily pads & flowers, as well as miles of flat waters, green grass and blue sky, was a delightful tonic to a techno-weary soul.
I flew home in the evening and would like to give a big thank you to Nokia and WOMWorld for a good trip filled with lovely devices, great conversations, and good new friends. Thank you.
Photo comparison post between the Nokia Astound/C7, Nokia E7, and the Nokia N8 coming up next.

Wed 03.23.11 – Today started with a breakfast meeting between the Nokia E7 enterprise team leaders and the bloggers, while not as lively as a discussion as yesterday morning, the enterprise guru – Todd Thayer – gave some good background on the considerations of creating a good mobile device for the enterprise customer.
After the breakfast meeting we went back over to the Convention Center for more of the Trade Show and keynotes, as well as participating in an Angry Birds high score challenge. I spent most of my day wandering around taking photos with the Nokia N8, C7 and E7 for a future photo comparison blog post. To give you a wee sneak peak, the E7 is an amazing and marvelous device with a great qwerty keyboard, a delicious tilted screen, but a sub-standard camera. The Nokia C7/Astound beat the E7 on every photo and occasionally took as good as the N8 photos.
I also spent a good hour or two at the CTIA Nokia booth in conversation with various folk, including the bright and talented Darin Burris. We covered a wide variety of subjects from mobile development, user experience design, how one goes from an artist/musician to a designer/developer, the Nokia+MicroSquash alliance, to the wonders of maltese dogs, as well as attempting to get a red circle on the Nokia Near Field Communication (NFC) cup game to no avail.
The folks at the Nokia booth had four stations of demo/display phones plus two NFC readers at each station that would read a NFC chip embedded on the bottom of coffee cups. Once one got a cup, one could go around to the stations and put the cup on the reader to see if one won, if the circle turned bright red and stayed red then one would win a Nokia N8. It was fun, interactive, and a great way to get CTIA attendees involved.
The evening hours were spent at the CTIA Unplugged event at the Hard Rock cafe which included a Lady Antebellum concert. Unfortunately, I did not feel very festive due to yesterday’s bad news and was not too peppy, but the company was good and I really had fun text with Erika on the Nokia E7’s qwerty keyboard. Love that keyboard, love it.
The evening ended with a nightcap at the hotel bar with our group and a few SXSW friends that walked by.

Tues 03.22.11 – The first full day of the Nokia CTIA adventure started with a breakfast meeting with the Nokia Astound / C7 team leaders and the CTIA Social Reporters (aka blogger type humans). We had a lively discussion about the Nokia Astound, its specifications, the aesthetics (I think it is lovely), and its market. I will write more on the Astound later, but it is truly a great smartphone in that not only is it full powered, lovely, elegant, takes good photos, and it will only be $79 with a contract on T-Mobile.
After the breakfast meeting, we, the blogger type humans, had an Ovi Maps Check In challenge before going over to the Orlando Convention Center for the CTIA Trade Show. The Convention Center was truly awe inspiring in size, scope, and over all hugeness. The Trade Show had so many bells, whistles, loud sounds, flashing lights, etc, that I thought I would need dark shades and ear plugs. The only downside was a some bad news from the home front. In the evening, we met up for dinner and had a lovely evening.

Sat 03.19.11 – Big weekend in the neighborhood of planet Earth: Hindus welcome in Spring in the festival of Holi, the Persian New Year in Nowruz, the Jewish spring holiday of Purim, the Spring Equinox, and a once every 18 years super Moon in perigee.
To celebrate all of this spring and astronomical related happiness, the dogs and I went to Irvine Regional Park this morning for a good long walk. The park and surrounding hills were cloaked in new green grass and the air was full of birdsong. The western bluebirds where at their boxes and I even heard baby bluebirds chirping from one box as the mom waited on a sycamore tree branch adjacent to the bluebird box. Lovely.
I like the idea of celebrating the New Year with the arrival of the Spring season and the vernal equinox. January 1 seems so out of place. Mid-March when the world is bursting with life, now that is New Year.
Happy Spring. Happy flowing creek water in Southern California.